


Die Another Date (I Mean, Day)

by trashdemon



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 21:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4850462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashdemon/pseuds/trashdemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[spy!au] Everyone in X Intelligence Agency knows that operations technician Jongdae has a favourite undercover agent, but it'll probably take an impending mission failure for him to admit it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Die Another Date (I Mean, Day)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Chenpionships Round 3](http://chenpionships.livejournal.com/56524.html)!

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Kyungsoo was a professional spy in his natural habitat: dressed in a shirt and tie, undercover in the IT department of the headquarters of the multinational Red Group company, and ready to execute the latest stage of his mission. Nothing could faze him or break his deep cover, except maybe for the nattering in his ear that was coming close to sending him off the rails.

"Come on, Agent D.O., official commands from your team technician himself: angle your button cam just a little to the right so I can get a proper view of Byun Baekhyun's ass while he's still trying to reach the trash can."

Under certain circumstances, Kyungsoo might have been inclined to admit that he thought Jongdae had one of the most beautiful voices in the world, but right now, if Jongdae hadn't been parked in a van a few blocks down the road, Kyungsoo would have shut him up with a chokehold.

Finally, the IT department's phone rang. Kyungsoo restrained himself from lunging for it, allowing the phone to ring once before answering. Just as they had planned, his team mate Jongin, embedded in Red Group's accounting department, had disseminated an email to the company executives containing one of Jongdae's viruses. The team was certain that at least one of the executives' computers contained evidence vital to their case, but Jongdae had of yet been unable to remotely access their encrypted files. The virus Jongin had sent out couldn't get through that security, but it could cripple individual PCs, giving Kyungsoo the perfect opportunity to grab some files while 'fixing' their computers.

Red Group's Deputy President was the first to fall for the email. It was his secretary, Oh Sehun, on the line, who responded to Kyungsoo's greeting with a sigh.

"He says his computer's crashed. Can't turn it on. Wants someone up here ASAP."

The line went dead before Kyungsoo could respond.

"Baekhyun," Kyungsoo said before leaving the office, "if you get any more calls about computers crashing, let me know. I've fixed a couple that have been having those problems, so it shouldn't be too much hassle."

Glad for any excuse to stay in his seat, Baekhyun grinned. "Sure will, Kangwoo."

Kyungsoo scratched his chin to block the button cam pinned to his shirt. For some reason, he didn't want Jongdae seeing Baekhyun's sweet smile.

In his white van, surrounded by monitors showing feeds from various security cameras as well as the button cams of his three team members, Jongdae was reclining in the driver's seat, feet up on the dashboard while slurping up black bean noodles from a takeaway bowl. He would have made a comment about Kyungsoo blocking the view of Baekhyun's face had his mouth not been full of noodles. Silenced by food, he was watching Kyungsoo enter the elevator when Zitao's speaker crackled to life.

"Agent Chen, I need the complete profile of the Deputy President's secretary right now."

Jongdae pulled up a tablet and flicked through the case profiles of Red Group employees. "You mean Oh Sehun? The skinny pretty boy with the dazed bitchface?"

"Yes, that's the one."

Chuckling as he sent over Sehun's file, Jongdae said, "You sure this is for the case, Agent Honey Peach? Not just because you decided he was your type after watching him through the security cameras?"

Zitao made an offended mewl. "I'm at work, Chen! Besides, if all I wanted was to get in his pants, I'd have just given him my number. No one can resist this face."

In the elevator in Red Group's headquarters, Kyungsoo broke into a coughing fit in an effort to communicate that he could hear their entire conversation far too loudly.

"I think D.O.'s getting jealous he doesn't have your full attention, Chen," Zitao giggled before disconnecting.

Reaching the forty-sixth floor, Kyungsoo was pointed to the Deputy President's office by Oh Sehun. The office was a long room devoid of security cameras, with a massive teak desk at the end of it. Sitting behind it was the Deputy President, a large middle-aged man with a perpetual frown pushing up his lower lip into a haughty pout.

At Kyungsoo's rap on the door, the Deputy President glared up through bushy eyebrows. "You from IT?"

He made way for Kyungsoo to have a look at his computer, but stood next to one of his pot plants, arms crossed and eyes never leaving Kyungsoo.

"Seems like we have ourselves a pickle," Kyungsoo said with feigned enthusiasm.

It was, of course, Jongdae who had designated the key word. Smiling to himself in his van, Jongdae sent an alert to Zitao , who was undercover in security, and soon all the alarms on Red Group's forty-sixth floor began blaring.

The Deputy President yelled over the alarms, "What the hell is going on?"

"Don't think we had any fire drills planned," Kyungsoo said.

"This place is falling apart." The Deputy President snapped his fingers. "You keep working. I'll get this blasted noise stopped."

As the Deputy President left the room, Kyungsoo inserted a USB drive containing script to override Jongdae's virus. Gaining access to the Deputy President's local files, Kyungsoo copied as much as he could.

When the Deputy President appeared on the footage of the hallway security camera, Jongdae said, "You're all clear, baby."

Kyungsoo broke professionalism for a moment to breathe, "Don't call me baby."

"Oh, baby, you hurt me," Jongdae laughed.

The desk drawers were Kyungsoo's first target and he rifled through their contents before turning to the filing cabinet at the back of the room, picking the lock and sifting through documents, holding some in front of his button cam for the team to peruse more carefully later. The memory of the Deputy President standing protectively in front of his pot plant brought Kyungsoo to that corner of the room. Lifting the leaves to peer into the pot, he saw a dark patch of disturbed soil. He sunk a finger into the dirt and it hit a metal button. With the alarms still wailing, it was impossible to detect any audio cues, so Kyungsoo spun to face the room, ready to duck in case he'd activated a trap.

On the opposite side of the room, the massive abstract painting slid a few centimetres to the right, revealing a small nook. Inside was a safe with a combination lock, which was no match for Kyungsoo's standard issue decoder. He slapped the device to the front of the safe and soon the door popped open. Inside was a microSD card, which Kyungsoo shoved into a pocket-sized processor which copied across its contents.

As Kyungsoo was locking up the safe, the alarms ceased, leaving silence ringing in his ears until Jongdae yelled, "He's coming back, eagle is landing, act natural!"

Kyungsoo sprinted to the other side of the room, sunk his hand into the pot plant mulch, and the painting slid back to the centre of the wall just before the Deputy President strode back into the room.

"Fixed?" the man grunted.

Wiping his dirty hand on the inside of his pants pocket and removing the USB drive from the Deputy President's computer with the other, Kyungsoo smiled. "Yes. You shouldn't have any problems with it now."

The Deputy President hesitated, looked at the login screen on his computer and then around at the room before dismissing Kyungsoo.

"Good thing you're so adorable or he'd totally have suspected you," Jongdae said.

Kyungsoo should have been annoyed at the comment, but his ears in the elevator mirror were turning pink. He turned off his communications device immediately.

***

The head of X Intelligence was a man of many names - Jia Heng, Kevin, Yi Fan - but currently he was known as Kris. He sat at a minimalist white desk with the hexagonal X Intelligence emblem emblazoned on the wall behind him. The room was clean and sparse apart from the carpet's dizzying (and, if Jongdae were honest, horrendously tacky) galaxy print. However, despite his occasionally questionable design choices, Kris was a good boss of the private intelligence agency, made formidable with the support of his lieutenant, Yixing, who was leaning against the wall, reading through Jongdae's case report for the week.

The Red Group case had been brought to X Intelligence by the CEO of Suho Corporation, Kim Junmyeon. Red Group, a massive multinational electronics company, had been buying over rival company after company, and Junmyeon had no idea how Red Group was managing to absorb all their rivals until his own company was targeted. Red Group claimed they had evidence proving that the design for the rollable smartphone, Suho Corporation's biggest seller, had been stolen from Red Group, and if Junmyeon didn't sell his company to them, Suho Corporation would be charged an inconceivable amount for damages. When Junmyeon denied existence of such evidence, Red Group had played an audio recording, and Junmyeon heard his own voice admitting Suho Corporation had engaged in industrial espionage to steal the designs. Junmyeon had come to X Intelligence, not just to destroy the falsified evidence about his own company, but also to clear the names of the rival companies who had been previously extorted.

When Kris had first discussed Junmyeon's credibility with Jongdae's team, he'd described the CEO as, "young, handsome, and a leader... Kind of like me." But from Jongdae's background check of Junmyeon, learning the CEO collected Pokémon plushies and Gundam figurines, Jongdae would have said that what made Kris and Junmyeon most alike were embarrassing amounts of dorkiness.

In his white leather swivel chair, legs crossed and hands in a steeple, Kris hmmed. "So you want to break into a secure underground electronic file depository?"

"Yep." Jongdae stuffed a handful of Doritos into his mouth and offered the packet to Kris. The boss declined, but Yixing slid over and took one without looking up from the case files.

The microSD card from the Deputy President's safe had contained the forged blueprints of a rollable smartphone that Red Group would claim Suho Corporation had stolen. From his investigations of the offices of the other company executives, Kyungsoo had found no other evidence, so the team was now focusing on the Deputy President. Without anyone asking him to, Zitao had been all too keen to play the honeypot, and he learned from Oh Sehun that the Deputy President kept the fabricated audio recording of Junmyeon in a heavily guarded electronic file depository. Oh Sehun had also revealed that the Deputy President was a suspicious man who refused to keep copies of files. If they could destroy the microSD card and obtain the audio recording as evidence of forgery, Red Group would no longer have leverage over Suho Corporation.

"You're really cracking down on this Deputy President," Kris said.

"From his investigations, Zitao's confident that this guy's the main culprit," Jongdae said.

Kris stroked his chin and nodded. "I trust Zitao's judgement."

Jongdae had to stop himself from rolling his eyes and saying, _That's just because Zitao thinks you're cool_.

Kris spun in his swivel chair. "Yixing, what do you think?"

Yixing took another Dorito and munched slowly before answering. "It'll be risky, but the potential evidence is enough to justify this mission, I think."

Pursing his lips and nodding, Kris shot a finger gun at Jongdae. "Write up a mission plan, submit it to Yixing for review, and debrief a team. I'm thinking Jongin with Zitao?"

"Yeah, agreed," Jongdae said. "If it's a night mission, do I get overtime?"

Kris winced. "Look, Jongdae, you know I'd love to, but after four of our teams got decimated in The Incident last year, we're barely keeping afloat."

Jongdae hadn't expected anything, of course, but he'd been hoping for some extra cash for a fancy dinner... And maybe to pay for a date. He laughed it off. "Just messing with you."

"Tell you what," Kris said as Jongdae stood to leave. "Your team finishes this case clean and I give you a pay rise."

"Seriously?" Jongdae sent a finger heart as he backed out of the room. "You're the world's best boss. Anyone tell you that your jacket looks super sharp on you? Your hair looks great, by the way. You too, Yixing."

Jongdae shut the door and turned to face the intrigued expressions of Minseok and Luhan.

"Did someone say, 'pay rise'?" Luhan said, draping his arm over Jongdae's shoulder.

Minseok rested his elbow on Jongdae's other shoulder, tip-toeing a little to reach. "When was the last time we got a pay rise, huh, Luhan?"

Jongdae rolled his eyes. "You guys don't need a pay rise. You're veterans! All you do is train the newbies and sit in coffee shops gazing lovingly into each other's eyes."

"Oh, we'd love to be out in the field. It's not our fault the rest of our team got themselves killed in The Incident." Luhan's tinkering laughter clashed horribly with his words.

"Jongdae, you need new shoes." Minseok pointed at Jongdae's once-fluffy pink Piglet bedroom slippers. Having worn them everywhere around headquarters, they'd been worn down until there was a hole where Piglet's nose had once been. "Those are a fucking disgrace."

Jongdae smirked. "I think you mean fucking awesome."

Mineok and Luhan shared a look and Luhan started giggling again.

"Anyway," Minseok cocked an eyebrow, "how goes things with your favourite agent?"

Jongdae pursed his lips. "What do you mean, 'favourite agent'?"

Luhan ribbed him. "Yo, come on, man, we all know you're sweet on Kyungsoo."

"HA!" Jongdae shouted. "HA! Keep talking shit, Luhan."

He shrugged them off and shuffled back to his team's office, grumbling in front of his computer as he closed all his Google searches of expensive restaurants for maybe a date.

***

Crawling through a chilly air conditioning duct deep underground, all Jongin could make out through his night vision goggles was the swell of Zitao's ass. Jongin was certain there would have been a dry smell of dust were his nasal cavities not clogged with the Hugo Boss cologne that Zitao had seemingly drenched himself in.

"Did you bathe in a bottle of perfume or what?" Jongin hissed.

"Look," Zitao shot back, "it's not my fault I didn't have time for a shower because _someone_ scheduled me on a double shift teaching the newbies tonight right before this mission."

Back in his office in X Intelligence headquarters, Jongdae cleaned his glasses on a sweater knitted with a sausage dog design. "Aww, don't be like that, Honey Peach. The kids love you."

"Actually, you terrify them."

Jongdae peered up to see a familiar blurry shape perching on the edge of his desk. He put on his glasses and Kyungsoo came into focus. He handed Jongdae a Tupperware container, the clear plastic red with kimchi.

"Thought you could use some noodles," Kyungsoo said.

"Are you an..." _Are you an angel?,_ Jongdae had almost said, but that would have sounded way more intimate than sarcastic and he managed to save himself, stuttering, "Are you serious?"

“Yeah, had some leftovers from dinner,” Kyungsoo said. “Figured you'd appreciate it.”

Zitao grumbled. "So D.O. brings you food and you only schedule him to teach the new recruits once a week. I see how it is."

Zitao and Jongin were crawling closer to the heart of the underground electronic file depository where users could store their information on highly fortified hard drives not connected to any network, and thus impervious to hacking from the outside. Drives were unlocked by fingerprint, but could only be read by a central computer, which was located ten floors below the room where the Deputy President's drive was stored. Jongin and Zitao's mission was to grab the drive, get it to the central computer, and copy the files before they were detected.

They reached the end of the duct and Zitao peered through the slits of the vent to survey the room below. The room was lined from floor to ceiling by rows of little doors, like an apothecary cabinet stocked with hard drives. A guard stood at the door, his back to the room. Zitao unscrewed the vent, then leapt to the ground, tumbling to break his fall. Zitao kept an eye on the guard, but the guy was sitting on a stool, humming to himself.

The Deputy President's drive was in slot 479, located about two metres off the ground. The guards could access the higher shelves with a sliding ladder, but moving it would be far too noisy. Instead, Jongin used the all-surface grappling hook that Park Chanyeol, X Intelligence's resident engineer, had developed. Firing it so the suction-cupped hook adhered to the ceiling, Jongin swung out of the aircon duct towards the wall. Grabbing onto the little door handles, Jongin shimmied across the wall to slot 479, holding a cast of the Deputy President's fingerprint, lifted from his coffee mug, between his teeth. Reaching the correct door, Jongin pressed the silicone finger against the scanner and the door opened. What they hadn't anticipated was the accompanying beeping, the affirmative tone piercing the silent room.

"Well, shit," Jongdae said.

Before Zitao could get to him, the guard turned. His eyes went wide at the sight of the two intruders.

"Hey!" the guard shouted, and slammed the alarm button.

As sirens screeched and lights flashed, Jongin grabbed the drive and swung back to the aircon duct. Zitao shot his own grappling hook into the vent and zipped up. The two agents raced to the central computer, sashaying towards the lower floors.

Zitao dropped down the air duct and wailed. "Oh my God, Kai, don't look, I just landed on a rat. I think I killed it."

Jongin gasped. "Why would you do that? Look at it, it's adorable."

"I didn't mean to!" Zitao pouted as he continued their descent. "I feel terrible."

Discretion no longer the priority, Zitao kicked out the air vent. Anticipating that the spies would go for the central computer, the guards were waiting and armed, but Zitao leapt down in a spinning kick that took two of them out at once. Keeping low, he swept the legs out from under four of the surrounding guards and somersaulted past the rest, leading them away so that Jongin could descend. Jongin shoved the drive into the computer and it seemed to take a lifetime to start up. One of the guards noticed him and started towards the computer, but Zitao grabbed the guard, kneed him in the face and threw him to the ground. Zitao tried to keep the guards engaged, but his fight was turning into a chase as they started retreating towards Jongin.

"Move your ass!" Zitao cried, elbowing a guard in the face while snagging another by the collar.

"I'm trying!"

The computer kept denying him access and Jongin was panicking, smashing the keyboard until Jongdae yelled, "Use the finger!"

As soon as the plastic cast of the Deputy President's finger touched the keyboard, a welcome jingle played and the screen changed to a soothing blue before displaying the contents of the drive. Jongin copied its contents across to his own flash drive, waiting for the process to complete as the guards steadily closed in on him, too afraid to shoot lest they damage the computer.

"Done!" Jongin shouted, strapping both drives into a pocket and grappling back to the duct.

Zitao leapt out of the fray to join him. Previously unable to use their weapons in close range, the guards finally had enough distance on Zitao to shoot, and they fired at him as he ascended with his grappling hook to the aircon duct. A bullet clipped his leg just as he was lifting himself through the vent. Crying out, his grip slipped and he would have fallen to the floor had Jongin not yanked him in by the wrists.

Blood smeared along the metal duct as Zitao pulled himself along.

"If I die," he heaved, "tell Oh Sehun..."

"Oh, geez," Jongin muttered. "You can tell him yourself."

"...Tell Sehun not to let you plebs dress my corpse for my burial. You're all unfashionable as shit." Zitao laughed shakily, panting breath echoing in the duct. "Okay, but seriously, there's a lot of pressure behind the blood flow. I think the bullet hit an artery."

"Shit." Jongin tried to turn back to help Zitao but the duct was too cramped. "Chen, there's not enough room to tourniquet Peachy's wound here. If we try to climb out of here, he's going to lose too much blood."

Before Jongin finished speaking, both Jongdae and Kyungsoo were already scouring plans of the building, Kyungsoo furiously rotating a 3D model while Jongdae flicked through diagrams of the sewer system.

"Head to your left and drop down another floor," Kyungsoo said. "Keep going straight and you'll reach the boiler room. Should be able to dress Honey Peach there."

"There's an old sewer running alongside the boiler room," Jongdae added. "But you'll have to blow up a concrete wall to access it."

"Good thing Chanyeol always packs me explosive putty," Jongin said.

"If you follow the sewer for five hundred metres, you'll come to an exit to the main road," Jongdae said. "It'll be sealed though..."

"I'll deal with it," Kyungsoo said, grabbing a communications device before leaving the office. "Kai, Honey Peach, meet me at the manhole and I'll pick you up."

"Good thing you came into HQ tonight, D.O.," Jongdae said over the comms as Kyungsoo headed to the garage. "I owe you one."

"You do." The revving of his car engine almost masked Kyungsoo's words as he said, "You owe me a date."

***

Monday morning and Jongdae's three team mates were back undercover, Zitao with a pair of crutches and a bandaged bullet wound hidden beneath an ankle brace. Jongdae was in HQ, analysing the data they'd recovered from the file depository. While the drive did contain the fabricated audio recording of Junmyeon, they still had no evidence of Red Group extorting the other companies. The team would have to remain in the field for a while longer to complete the mission.

The communication line with his team was silent as Jongdae played with the audio file, trying to isolate the sound clips that had been stitched together to make the fake statement. It seemed to be a normal Monday in the Red Group building, which Jongdae was glad for, because he'd been worried Zitao's injury would raise suspicions. Undoubtedly, the file depository guards would have alerted the Deputy President that his drive had been stolen, and Jongdae was wary of underestimating that guy as just an ordinary businessman.

Against his better judgment, he'd let Zitao, overly enthusiastic as always, go back to work. Jongdae's rational side had been a little frazzled since Kyungsoo had asked him out on a date, a request he still wasn't sure he'd heard properly. That night, the more pressing predicament of extracting Zitao and Jongin alive had quashed all other small talk, and Jongdae had been too terrified to bring up the topic since.

Nevertheless, in case it hadn't been a hallucination of his sleep-deprived, caffeine-fuelled mind, Jongdae was once again Googling restaurants. Steakhouses. Kyungsoo liked steak.

Jongdae was shuffling out of the room when a high pitched beeping whined from his office. Overcoming his urge to make another coffee, he returned to his desk and realised the alarm was a distress signal, only used in the biggest emergency known to spies: a blown cover. And this alarm was flashing green, the colour allocated to Kyungsoo.

"No, no, no..."

Jongdae pulled up Kyungsoo's GPS tracker while paging Kris with the other hand. He tried to contact Kyungsoo's comms device but all he got was static.

As soon as he heard the pager line connect, he yelled, "Kyungsoo's cover's blown. He's out of the Red Group building, moving way too fast to be on foot."

"Shit," Kris said, and called for Yixing.

Jongdae pulled up a live satellite footage. "Looks like he's in a black SUV heading towards the highway. I'll put Jongin and Zitao on it. If they leave now, they might--"

"No," Kris said, and Jongdae, reaching to turn on the comms link with his team, halted. "I cannot authorise you to dispatch Jongin and Zitao. We can't risk exposing them too. We've worked for too long on this case, and we don't have the human resources to replace them. You are forbidden from contacting them about Kyungsoo's distress signal."

"Are you kidding?" Jongdae smacked the table. "Kyungsoo's been _abducted_ and you want to do nothing?" __

 __"Yixing is trying to make contact with Luhan and Minseok. They have the expertise for a rescue mission."

"Boss," Yixing piped up, "I'm not getting a response from Luhan and Minseok. I think they said something about a movie date."

A date... Jongdae thought of Kyungsoo in a blazer and linen shirt, across a table laid with silverware and steak, heart shaped smile illuminated by warm candlelight. Then the image of that black SUV and the sound of static filled his mind.

"Fuck this," he said, grabbed a comms device, and ran out of the office.

He leapt into his van, chucking it into gear and pulled a laptop onto his lap.

Kris's voice crackled through his earpiece. "Agent Chen, what the hell are you doing?"

"Getting shit done."

"You're not a field agent, Chen."

Eyes flicking between the road and his laptop screen as he sped out of the garage, Jongdae chuckled. "Yeah, I know."

Kris paused. "Just... don't get yourself hurt."

"Can't spare losing another agent?"

"Don't want to attend another funeral." Kris cleared his throat. "Agent Lay will be your base."

Yixing's voice was as calm as ever. "Talk me through your plan, Agent Chen."

Jongdae laughed. "Plan is to stop that SUV before it hits the highway."

He ran a red light and car horns screeched behind him. His fingers skimmed over the keyboard and he hacked into the traffic mainframe. A couple of keystrokes later and he was giving himself green lights all the way to the city and past Red Group's cold, shiny building. Kyungsoo's GPS signal was still pinging from the black SUV and Jongdae, driving at over twice the speed limit, was closing the distance between them.

"Well, um, I have to ask... what do you plan to do once you catch up to them?" Yixing said.

"Look, Lay, you hired me because I'm a genius, right? I'll think of something."

Except the SUV was fast approaching the highway and Jongdae, not a field agent, didn't have a single gadget on him except for his computers. He scanned the monitors, the satellite data, the traffic camera footage, and he grinned.

"I'm going to make a scene."

Yixing sighed. "Of course you are. But please try to keep in mind that the bigger the incident, the more it costs to clean up."

It was a perfect convergence of events. The SUV was coming up to an intersection a couple of blocks ahead from Jongdae as a huge truck approached the traffic lights from a perpendicular road. Jongdae triple-checked the live satellite footage, checking the positions of all other civilian vehicles, then switched the lights.

Both the SUV and the truck driver saw green. They hurtled into the intersection, the truck just a bit ahead of the SUV. A block away, Jongdae could hear the car horns and screeching of brakes before the SUV smashed into the side of the truck.

A glance at the satellite footage told him that the crash was bad. What if Kyungsoo…? He pushed the thought aside as he flicked all the surrounding traffic lights to red. No time for doubts.

He drove as close as he could to the intersection then leapt out of the van. Good thing he'd ditched his Piglet slippers for sneakers today.

"Agent Chen, there are five similar black vehicles, presumed hostile, approaching your location," Yixing warned.

"Got it."

No one had yet emerged from the wrecked SUV. The crumpled vehicle was on its side, having tried to swerve before it hit the truck. Behind the smashed window, Jongdae could see the driver, unconscious, as well as a number of armed guards. The back windows were blacked out, and the door of the trunk had been shifted off its hinge.

Jongdae wrenched open the rear door and there was Kyungsoo, bound and groggy with tranquiliser, but very much alive, and Jongdae cried out in relief. Vehicle teetering, Jongdae hauled Kyungsoo out of the trunk, cut the plastic bindings, then threw Kyungsoo's arm over his shoulder to drag him back to his van.

Head lolling, Kyungsoo looked up with unfocused eyes. "Wha…?"

Just this sign of recognition was enough to send Jongdae laughing with relief. "I'm saving your fucking life!"

"Agent Chen," Yixing's voice spoke in his ear, "Hostile vehicles are currently at your location, but it seems our distress signal was finally picked up by..."

Yixing was cut off by a barrage of gunfire, which was followed by a whooping as a slight figure wearing a zippered face mask leapt onto a car.

"Have no fear, Agent Xiumin and Agent Kaneki are here!"

Minseok grumbled through the earpiece, "I swear, if you don't stop code-naming yourself after fucking anime characters..."

"Empty threats, babe. I know you still love me."

Jongdae held tight to Kyungsoo's waist to support him as they made the painstakingly slow trip back to Jongdae's van.

"We're almost there," he told Kyungsoo, who was struggling to regain full consciousness. "Just a little further."

"Duck," Kyungsoo mumbled suddenly, and Jongdae obeyed without hesitation as Kyungsoo swung his leg over Jongdae's back, smashing his boot into a mercenary's face.

Kyungsoo stumbled and Jongdae grabbed him as Luhan bounded out of nowhere and took the mercenary down.

"Xiumin and I will handle this, you two just concentrate on getting together." Luhan winked. "I mean, getting out of here together."

Jongdae groaned. He'd get Luhan back for that later.

Mercenaries poured out of the five black SUVs but, despite being drastically outnumbered, Minseok and Luhan steadily fended them off. Civilians, screaming at the combat in the intersection, were trying to drive away despite the banked up roads. Kyungsoo's legs were wobbly, but the van was in sight. They were going to make it.

"Hey, Jongdae," Kyungsoo croaked.

Jongdae pulled Kyungsoo out of the way of a reversing car. "Yeah, what is it buddy?"

Kyungsoo looked up at Jongdae with large eyes and a smile parting his full lips. "How does Friday night sound?"

Jongdae laughed as a cacophony of gunfire and screams and car horns went off behind them. Kyungsoo's body felt very nice against his. "Perfect."  


**Author's Note:**

> This was so much fun, but so challenging to write!! Balancing exposition and dialogue in a plot-heavy fic was tougher than I expected! I'd love to know what you thought, so please feel free to leave a comment or crit!
> 
> As always, infinite thanks to [whereisexom](http://whereisexom.tumblr.com/tagged/my-edit), for her kickass edit and for being the editor who kicks my ass. This fic would be a dead fish without you. I love you.
> 
> crossposted on [livejournal](http://trashdemon.livejournal.com/2055.html)


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